Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde mulls a new force for Intelligence gathering

NEW DELHI: With the Centre still struggling to create NCTC, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde today came up with an idea of having a separate force all together for intelligence gathering.

"This is in total preliminary stage. I will share more details later," Shinde told reporters on his maiden press conference after taking over the ministry.

He was replying to a question about increasing the 1:40,000 ratio of intelligence officers and local population.

He said this will also decrease the risk of getting the officers working for intelligence exposed before the public.

"Officials and staff for intelligence agencies come from our police forces and they are identified in their own districts," he said.

This prompts for the idea of having a separate force for intelligence gathering so that the officials working in it are not identified," Shinde said leaving journalists with many posers who wanted to know whether it was a parallel to Intelligence Bureau.

He said IB was a prestigious organisation of the country which had its foot prints everywhere and nothing will be done to dilute its position.

"This is not an easy task. We will be talking to states as we have to make intelligence gathering lucrative by giving more incentives," he said.

The National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) was mooted by his predecessor P Chidambaram which was opposed by many states saying it was infringing on the rights of the state. The proposal has since been kept on back burner.